Circle Rules Football Game #1The Circle Rules Federation is comprised of the co-creators and most avid players of the new sport, circle rules football, invented in 2006 as a senior theatre project at NYU’s experimental theater wing.
The hope with circle rules, as it is colloquially called, was to bridge a long standing gap between sports and the arts. The game is, for all intensive purposes, a competitive sport, and since its inception, it has been played as such. However, circle rules football was developed with the fundamental understanding that all sports are a type of theater, and the same artistic choices a playwright or director would face might also be faced by a sport inventor. Therefore, our knowledge of both athletics and of theater was equally instrumental to the development of circle rules. The game has been played on many fields across the country and internationally; it has held its ground with a broad spectrum of players and of varying degrees of competition.
The support network of circle rules football has grown organically, mostly through word of mouth. In the past few years, circle rules football groups have launched in many regions throughout the world, appearing in hundreds of fields across the country and abroad. Here in its home base of New York, league play began in spring 2009 and staying true to its performative roots, circle rules was featured in three major festivals that Summer, one for new sports, one for environmental art, and one for theatre. Now that the game has proven to hold a successful and challenging structure, peak interest, and maintain momentum it is time for its governing body, the Circle Rules Federation to follow and support the players wherever they are.
Goals:
Our long term goals follow two main trajectories; sports education, and league development: In sports education, we seek to enlist a group of artists and athletes who will conduct sports invention workshops with students and adults of all ages and professions. We are devoted to the notion that sportsmanship and healthy completion are virtues that transcend particular expertise and profession. Through creative competition, we may learn how to change the rules that govern our lives.
In league development, we seek to expand in these directions:
- Expanding our online presence through social networking servers and media.
- Development of new youth leagues in association with educational organizations
- Establishment as the governing body of circle rules football, updating the rules as necessary, and coordinating leagues around the country and the world
- Coordination of inter-city matches.
- Promotion of adult recreational leagues around the country
- Continued promotion of circle rules to colleges and universities
- Participation in theater festivals and art exhibitions.
- Integration of art culture with sport culture at all possible events
